Confraternity Prints Digital

Little is known about the (former) existence of the ‘Imperial-Royal Confraternity for the Dead’ in Vienna. The research project Totenkult und Jenseitsvorsorge in Wien: Barocke Bruderschaftsdrucke als Forschungsgegenstand der digitalen Geisteswissenschaften (Mortuary Cult and Preparation for the Afterlife: Baroque Confraternity Prints as Research Object for the Digital Humanities), which is funded by the city of Vienna, is doing pioneer work analysing the prints published by the Confraternity for the Dead with the help of philological expertise and digital methods.

During Phase I of the project (started 1 June 2014), the structurally and linguistically annotated source material served as the starting point for basic preliminary hypotheses about the Fraternity’s history, its members, function and significance. During Phase II of the project (started 1 December 2015), around 100 printed broadsheets, which had been located in various libraries in Vienna and were found to stand in relation to the activities of the Fraternity, were processed digitally and annotated with semantic information. Currently, in the third phase of the project (started Spring 2017), personal data drawn from the sources is being contextualised and conclusions are being prepared for publication.